Primary care- whose responsibility?

Abstract

The increasing recognition of the importance of the primary care concept which has taken place in the past ten years has been accompanied by the rapid and successful development of family practice as a major response to marked deficits in primary care. More recently we are seeing more varied and fragmented approaches to this need by other specialties which have previously concentrated their efforts on secondary and tertiary care. Instead of competing for the primary care banner, the medical profession should give high priority to better understanding the nature of primary care and specifically training primary care physicians with a sufficiently broad range of knowledge and skills to provide primary care of high quality for patients of any age and their families.